No idea about Software Testing Basics? Get an Idea before your next Interview!

Candidate: I have been part of Sanity, Functional and Regression testing levels.

Me: (Those are not levels!) Okay. Ever used any Testing techniques?

Candidate: Yeah! We used to maintain an RTM to track coverage.

Me: (What!) Okay. Any about the V-Model?

Candidate: Yes, have heard about that but cannot recollect.

Me: (Please ask only about Agile) Okay. Do you follow Agile?

Candidate: Yes.

Me: (Finally!) What is your team composition from Roles perspective?

Candidate: Basically I am playing a Test Lead role here taking care of all the Testing activities.

Me: Okay. I am done!

Get an Idea before your next Interview!

I understand that the industry is (or already has?) moving towards Automation as one-stop-test-solution but people need to understand that there is much more to testing. I agree situational interviews are the way-to-go, but some theoretical clarifications won’t do any harm. Every tester needs to know the basics at least. It’s essential to be prepared for a time-boxed interview. Get some basic facts clear before facing the next interview, to avoid embarrassment.

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Dave Irving | Remediation PM

Totally agree with this. Often in interview experienced people cannot answer even the most basic of questions. Sometimes you just have to admit that despite all the prep, you performed poorly in the interview. We’re not perfect, we make mistakes.

Personally I believe that as a QA we should have this all basic knowledge.

But sometimes due to work/company structure we are working in that environment, still we are not clear about the procedure.

I faced same type of issue one time and the interviewer was like you don’t know this much?

And I was like yeah I don’t know, because I didn’t faced this type of situation earlier.

So as a QA other than your office structure.

You should have basic knowledge of the QA procedure and its information.

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Rishi Davda | Performance QA Engineer at Lombard Risk

Agreed. People come through with buzz words stating they know xyz but can’t explain the first thing about it and try to just see how far they get on interviews.

I had one person trying to sell me an automation frame work they spent 5 years building and turned out to be selenium ide record and play. But on the CV it was selenium web driver. (Also made me question why you would spend so long creating ide tests and not move to web driver but that’s another discussion)

I would more likely hire someone if they said I have limited knowledge with tools sets this is what research I have done on testing and agile best practices and show their willingness to learn.

Deepanshu Agarwal | Senior QA Engineer

Exactly the point Rishi 👍 Thanks for bringing this up. The industry has moved to automation doesn’t mean you have to leave functional and fake about your automation prowess. It gets more tricky (and clear 😉) as soon as you start asking about automation. But I would say it’s not just ‘our’ fault – industry today don’t hire people with average skills. They are looking for people good at both functional and then automation. The end result – fake it till you make it.

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Krishnan Mahadevan | Senior Staff Software Engineer at Visa

I would be curious to know what exactly is being vetted out via these questions. Yes applying techniques might increase test efficiency but how many times have we sat down and tested as per jargons? IMHO testing is an attitude. That can and should be vetted out by throwing real life problems at candidates and watch them approach it. That would tell a lot about a candidate.

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Ramdas Krishna Baliga | Staff Software Engineer in Test at Intuit

Nice article link. Good to brush up basics. With new concept of fast deploy and everyone as an engineer, test levels condense to fewer levels. Having said that my understanding is “integration” testing is testing of interaction between different modules within the system (not between systems as in the article) when u have system testing at higher level. Again the focus is now more on prototyping with alpha/beta channels and UAT is much more diverse.

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Mohit Malhotra | Senior Software Test Engineer at Gyrix TechnoLabs

I totally agree with your perception, Test Engineers must have complete basic knowledge and practical approach to put things on right place.

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Magesh Venkateswarlu | Senior Quality Engineer at CNSI

You are right sir but according to my view people are struggling to express themselves actively when they were in interview especially even though they are fair enough with basic concepts this is my opinion please forgive me If it is wrong.

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Software Testing Studio is an attempt to share some incredible knowledge from industry leaders & experts, which should be helpful for anybody to start his/her career in ‘Software Testing’ or to progress it further. Apart from the technical nitty-gritties, one can also find some intellectual posts by industry experts sharing their Wisdom.